Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Goodmorning to all of you. I just wanted to post that I still have the wandering boxie at my house. However.... my daughter and I have decided that we could print up a picture of him and tape it on the waste-basket next to the mail boxes in her area. People used to put fliers on the mailboxes themselves, but now there is a rule there that you will be fined if you do so. However, it doesn't say you can't put one on the trash can. So......I took a digital of the boxie and we are going to afix fliers to the baskets in the area and see if we hear from anyone.

I figure that we can ask them to identify him by asking a question about him. There is a marking on his head that isn't visible in the picture, so if we ask and they can tell us what it is, then we will know it belongs to them. If not, we will tell them to give us their number and if within a week we have not found the real owner we will give them a call and see if they would still like to have him, but only if he can be kept outdoors and not in a container. I feel bad that we are just now getting around to doing this, but I have had a lot on my plate this past week (as has my daughter)and I haven't had time to do anything about him other than just care for him.

I let him wander the yard during the daylight hours, but at night I put him into one of the cages I had for mine to stay in at night before we built the pen for them out back. Anyway.....he immediately wanders over to where the pen is and walks around it. He sits under one of the bushes on one side of the pen and then later wanders back to the other side and spends time under that bush. My ? here is.......can he sense that there are other boxies on the other side of that wall he is sitting by? I'm just curious. If so.....then I know for sure I want to find his owner if he has one, and if not I want to get him an owner. I don't like the thought that he knows they are in there and he is being isolated from them. If I kept him, that is how he would have to live, and I don't like that.

Ok......I will keep you posted on what becomes of my "wanderer"!
I hope all of you are having a good day. Take care! .....9boxies

That's a good question with regards to him knowing the turtles are in there. I honestly haven't heard of any pheremone studies with box turtles, but I'm assuming that pheremones play a role in their reproduction. I do know that turtles have very sensitive olfactory areas in their brain. In college, I presented a paper in "Senior Seminar" on the measurements of olfactory responses in T.c.triunguis. I think that this dude is smelling your females and looking for some lovin'.

Now, I'm not a big fan of wild collection. But, if there is really no habitat in close proximity of where you found him why don't you keep him? I know that you have some turtles already. Are they different species, or from an area far away? If you're concerned about unwanted flora or fauna on him or in him, take him to a vet for fecal and health evaluation. Then, keep him in quarantine for a couple of months. If he's already in your backyard, the chances are that there has been some "bug mixing" already. I'm sure some people will vehemently disagree with me. But, if he's destined for a life of captivity already why shouldn't it be with someone who cares as much as you do?

I don't think boxies are attracted to eachother through smell. I've read and experienced that male boxies must make eye contact with a female in order to mate. And for those of you who have seen boxies breed this is the case. The male normally catches a glimpse and then makes a beeline for the female. Somehow the female sees the exact second he made contact and normally heads for the hills. Also if boxies were attracted by smell to eachother I don't think there populations would be as fragmented, just my thought. As for taking the turtle out of the wild I am totatlly against taking from the wild. If you found one boxie odds are there may be more. I didn't catch your original post but remember a boxie in captivity has as much impact on a population as one that is dead. But I understand kensopher post, I sometimes wish I had kept the boxies in my backyard that are now completely gone. With boxies, more than any other turtle it is a real tough situation.

The original post clearly stated that there is NO available habitat in the area for the turtle. It must have been a relocated animal. In that case, relocation to another area is the only chance for this turtle to remain in the wild. This is strongly discouraged by just about everyone in the wildlife conservation community. So, what should she do? Keep it, give it to someone else, or kill it?
I was given a box turtle by a nature museum who had to separate it from their females. He harassed them constantly. This turtle was taken off of the streets of Bronx, New York. He was found walking in the middle of the street in an area that had been concrete and buildings for nearly a century. Should he have been left there? Someone obviously brought him there. They were at fault, not the people who rescued him. The original poster is the rescuer, not the relocator.
Turtles do track things by scent. It has been shown in Wood turtles that they can find food in a maze simply be scent. Box turtles have a much stronger sense of smell than we do. Of course it seems like male box turtles react by seeing a female. That's the only sense that we can observe!! My turtles come up out of the leaf litter when I drop a plate of food into the pen. They first smell it. They don't react in this manner when I approach the pen for any other reason. Then, they react with renewed vigor when they see it. Pheremones play an important role in males finding females of countless animals. The problem is, we can really only do reliable studies by exposing animals to pheremones and detecting their changes in brain activity in the laboratory setting. So far, this has shown a positive response in both males and females. How this plays out in the wild, we must extrapolate.

Before we built the new fence last year and had a box turtle pen with females in it. More than once we found male turtles breaking into our yard & trying to get into the pen. One time we had a male try to burrow into the pen but there was a barrier underground, he couldn't dig under it so he ended up spending the night next to the pen then apparently gave up the next day because he left.

Now did those males see the females? I'm thinking they did because at the time we had a chain link fence and the turtle pen was also made of a see through wire fencing material. Since the new fence and gates were built no turtles have been able to get in or out, so once the females are outside full time again.. I have a feeling we won't be seeing any males trying to break in.

I wonder about something else. Can they make sounds to each other that they can hear but we humans cannot?
I often wonder if our tortoise can make sounds that only the dog can hear because the dog & tortoise seem to be able to communicate with each other.
Now the dog elderly & is losing his hearing so I wonder if I'll see changes between them as his hearing gets worse.
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PHRatz

>> Turtles do track things by scent. It has been shown in Wood turtles that they can find food in a maze simply be scent. Box turtles have a much stronger sense of smell than we do. Of course it seems like male box turtles react by seeing a female. That's the only sense that we can observe!! My turtles come up out of the leaf litter when I drop a plate of food into the pen. They first smell it. They don't react in this manner when I approach the pen for any other reason. Then, they react with renewed vigor when they see it.

Good point! I've noticed all of mine smell things before they decide to eat or not. The aquatics have a sense of smell under water too.
I really can't say for certain that when we've had male turtles bust into the yard that they did see the females. All I know for sure is that the dog found the males then came to get me to show me that a turtle who doesn't belong here is in the yard. LOL
The dog smells each turtle, he knows which ones are supposed to be here. I know that because when it's one of ours that the dog runs to he'll smell the turtle then his mannerisms say oh it's just you.

This year it will be interesting to see if we happen to have any turtles trying to get through the gates or not.
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PHRatz

There may be other studies on the subject, but the one of which I'm aware concluded that olefactory signals did not appear to come into play with box turtles when locating a mate. This study was done by Dr. William Belzer, and was published in the Turtle and Tortoise Newsletter in 2000. This is certainly a worthy suject for further research.

Not to draw any conclusions on the tendency of this mystery turtle to be attracted in some way to the barrier separating enclosures, but I have observed that my group here tend to gravitate toward solid objects (logs, large rocks, walls) and generally avoid being in the open, whether they are looking for mates or not. Even the hatchlings I'm headstarting will dig themselves in at the corner or edge of the containers they're kept in. When the turtles here hunker down for the night, regardless of age or gender, they sleep against or under something.

As for keeping the turtle, I'm reluctant to give advice without seeing the area in question, so I'll reserve comment.

Yes, you are correct about turtles heading for corners or objects to dig in by. But, then again, in my yard where this turtle is there are 9 different corners the turtle could bury into, (not to mention along the whole fence-line, flower beds etc.) but he chose to go to the pen and always stays there all day long. So.....does that mean he is just hunting a place to bury himself, or does he smell or sense the other turtles are inside that pen?

Mind you, I have the nightime cage up on my patio which is on the opposite side of the yard from the turtle pen, and I do have a nice size backyard. The first time I let him out onto the ground, he headed the direction of the pen. Now every morning when I let him out, that is where he ends up after eating and roaming around the yard a while. He stays there until I put him back into the cage at dark. Thus, I feel that he does sense that there are other turtles on the other side of that barrier. He cannot see inside the pen! Oh, one other thing.....the corner he chooses to bury into is the area where the other turtles (or most of them) have their cubbies and stay most of the time.)

I hope all of you have a good week-end! Take care! .......9boxies

> The first time I let him out onto the ground, he headed the direction of the pen. Now every morning when I let him out, that is where he ends up after eating and roaming around the yard a while. He stays there until I put him back into the cage at dark. Thus, I feel that he does sense that there are other turtles on the other side of that barrier. He cannot see inside the pen! Oh, one other thing.....the corner he chooses to bury into is the area where the other turtles (or most of them) have their cubbies and stay most of the time.)

I couldn't say one way or the other if he knows the others are there but it's very interesting that he does this.
Without being a turtle myself it's difficult to know everything that's going on in those little heads of theirs.
Their behavior is fascinating though.
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PHRatz

>>Goodmorning to all of you. I just wanted to post that I still have the wandering boxie at my house. However.... my daughter and I have decided that we could print up a picture of him and tape it on the waste-basket next to the mail boxes in her area. People used to put fliers on the mailboxes themselves, but now there is a rule there that you will be fined if you do so. However, it doesn't say you can't put one on the trash can. So......I took a digital of the boxie and we are going to afix fliers to the baskets in the area and see if we hear from anyone.

Oooh it'd be really interesting to see if an owner comes forward. That happened here 2-3 years ago. I saw a lost ad in the newspaper.. I always read the lost & found. It was for a turtle, the ad mentioned a particular marking & a few days later over the ad was a big FOUND printed across it. So that turtle got to go home.
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PHRatz